Relative Fortunes (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  Over Glennis’s whimper Julia posed the question bluntly: “So you believe Naomi had the courage, the will, to take her own life?”

  Alice met it with a steady gaze. “Naomi lived with purpose, Miss Kydd. She wanted everything she did to count, which for her meant to ease suffering and right wrongs. If she felt she could no longer endure the misery of her situation, then yes, I think she’d want her death to mean something. Like with those hunger strikes. Sometimes death is the loudest voice you have.”

  Julia understood. She’d heard Gerald’s last shout, even if his parents refused to.

  Alice watched Glennis’s head bob over her lap in quiet sniffling. “But I’m certain she would have left a message for us here at the Union. She had a notebook and pen—to gather her thoughts before the meeting, she said—beside her when I left. But when I came home and found Mr. Rankin and Dr. Perry there, the notebook was in a strange place, on the pantry sideboard. She’d never put it there, you see. It’s been worrying me no end.”

  “Chester.” Glennis’s face lifted. “I knew it. Was he horrid to you?”

  Alice hesitated. “He was upset. We all were. I could barely fathom what had happened, why he was there, before he began asking me questions. He wanted to know about her headaches and didn’t I think she’d suffered terribly from them, but when I saw the empty tube, I realized what she’d done. I also understood then how he intended to explain it away.”

  “He can be a brute. Did he hurt you?” Glennis asked. “Say something nasty?”

  “He was upset,” Alice repeated dully.

  “You’re too nice. He bullied Naomi, and he must hate you too. He did, didn’t he?”

  Alice answered with care. The subject was clearly a bitter one. “As you know, he was obliged to allow her a small stipend. It was her money, after all. Last fall he wrote up a special document spelling out exactly what he would and would not allow her to do with it. As if she were a child. He made her sign it, promising to abide by his terms or risk losing access to her money altogether. Oh, his terms were plenty clear, but they left her so mean a pittance that it’s a marvel she managed at all.”

  “That’s how he forced her to move back into the house,” Glennis said.

  “There was enough money to maintain a small household or to fund our work. Not both,” Alice said. “So she agreed to live under his nose, literally, and used her monthly stipend to keep this place running. We pay our workers far too little, but we must pay them something. You can’t begin to understand her generosity, Miss Rankin. She let me live in the apartment with her, even though I couldn’t help with expenses. We ate mostly what friends brought us, women who can’t give money to the Union but can spare bread and vegetables, and we did our own laundry and housework, to save money.” She pulled a hand across her face. “I’ll miss our little home.”

  “You’ll stay, won’t you, until you find another place?”

  “No.” Alice paused. “After the service, Mr. Rankin asked me to move out. Or, rather, he said I could either stay in or stay away once the obituary was published. I couldn’t come and go. I had to be here, of course, so I left. He didn’t want the newspapers to ask me—”

  Glennis began to interrupt, but Alice added, “And he promised the Union a large sum, five hundred dollars, from Naomi’s account if I told everyone here she died from a sudden illness and if we promised not to speak to reporters about her. It was hard, but for so much money I had to agree. He said he’ll let me know when I can return to the apartment, after the attention dies down, to gather my things. I hope by next week or so.”

  “Do you have somewhere to stay?” The flare of her nose suggested Glennis was imagining one of the pungent doorsteps they’d passed on their way.

  Alice gestured to a narrow cot against the far wall. “It’s not bad. I can make soup and tea on the gas ring and wash up at the basin there. We often—”

  At the sound of voices in the outer room, Alice spoke in a rush. “Miss Rankin, please understand me. I showed you these notes only so you’d know Naomi had reasons to take her life, reasons beyond her usual difficulties.” She gathered up the papers and pushed them into the envelope. “I’m afraid I must ask a favor of you. I’m absolutely certain Naomi would leave a note. Your brother must have taken it away for some reason. If you could find it and tell me what she wrote—the part for me and the Union—I’d be forever grateful. It would mean the world . . .”

  She gripped Glennis’s wrist. “She’d want us to know exactly why she did it. She was so strong, so full of life. It would take something terrible, terrible, to defeat her spirit. I wish the world could know why too—know that her battle for justice finally cost her her life—but that’s impossible now. Your brother has seen to that. But I want to know, and everyone in our cause who loved her deserves to know her sacrifice. That’s enough for me.”

  “I need to know too,” Glennis said. “If Chester’s behind this, if he drove her to it, well, as soon as I can get my money out of his hands, I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. He may have gotten away with murder, but that doesn’t mean he can just waltz—”

  The door opened, and Fern and Beatha crowded into the small room with another woman, a rosy-faced matron with a bosom the size of a bread box. Alice slid the envelope into the drawer and locked it as the newcomer engulfed Glennis with more wringing declarations of grief and sympathy.

  Ten minutes later Glennis and Julia stood on the smelly pavement outside the Union. They retraced their steps to the stationer’s shop without speaking, each absorbed in thought. As they neared Broadway, Glennis turned abruptly and said, “I’ve been to a place somewhere around here. I think I can find it. We need brandies.”

  It was six o’clock. They bobbed their way through workers streaming out of office buildings and shops and factories. In the second building they entered, Glennis searched until she found an unmarked third floor door that looked familiar. A man in shirtsleeves with oiled black hair answered the bell, sized up the chance that they might cause trouble and the probable extent of their money, and let them in.

  A young man lay flopped over one arm of a sofa, too pickled to move or speak. Another man and two women sat beside him, bleating laughter. Glennis headed toward two stools at the other end of the room. “Martell brandies, if you have it,” she told the man who’d admitted them. “Otherwise, gin rickeys with your best stuff.”

  Glasses of what was purported to be brandy arrived. One sip told Julia there may have been a splash or two of brandy in the vicinity, perhaps even of Martell, but something else predominated, and a heavy hand had watered it well. It stood to reason, sadly enough. Any place that would serve strangers, even poshed-up and thirsty-looking ones, must extract big profits to cover the risk.

  Glennis wrinkled her nose. “Weasel pee,” she declared before downing a hearty gulp. “Well, now we know. Something’s skunky, and I bet a bank wad Chester is behind it. Alice is right. Naomi would never take those tablets by mistake. That means Chester stole her note. It’s exactly what he would do. Because it said how impossible he made her life.”

  She shoved her hat back into place. “I still think he forced her to swallow those tablets. That’s murder for sure.”

  The unhelpful specter of murder reappeared, settling comfortably on Glennis’s shoulder. Julia ignored its grin and waited for Glennis’s better nature and common sense to prevail. But it was left to her to point out, “We just heard Alice confirm how miserable Naomi was. If she’s convinced of suicide, it seems fruitless to harp on about murder, Glennis, however much you’d like to indict your brother. And besides, he didn’t go downstairs until after you made that scene at Vivian’s party. By then she was already dead.”

  “So he went down earlier. Or Nolda did. She thinks she’s such a cleversticks. The apartment key’s at the top of the stairs. Maybe she did it.”

  For heaven’s sake. “While Alice was there?”

  “Oh, all right. But even if Chester didn’t outright kill her, he did h
is best to make her life hell, and that has to count for something.” She folded her arms, as obstinate as a four-year-old. Chester had to be guilty of something.

  Julia rather suspected he was, but leaping to the most outlandish possibility only diverted attention from his less drastic suspicious behavior. “Let’s get back to our real aim,” she suggested. “We want to find out why and how Naomi died. Everything points to suicide, but then why was there no note? Alice insists she’d have left one. So I’ll agree that Chester does seem intent on ensuring no one knows what really happened.”

  “I’m positive he trousered that note.” Glennis downed the last of her so-called brandy and waited for its strange flavor to pass, making a face that mirrored her brother’s moue of disgust.

  “Very possibly. But I’m sure it’s long gone now,” Julia said. “He’d destroy it right away.”

  Glennis brightened. “Not necessarily. I bet he still has it.”

  The room was filling with boisterous young people, stenographers and clerks from nearby offices enjoying the first fruits of the week’s paycheck. Julia set her untouched glass beside Glennis’s. “Is that realistic? Why would he save proof of his own deceit?”

  Glennis found money in her bag, too much, and tucked it under the glasses. “He’s a banker, Julia, a glorified bean counter. He keeps everything, in triplicate if he can. None of us can sneeze without him writing down when the doctor came and how much the medicine cost.”

  “He keeps files?” An idea formed, risky but perhaps not impossible. “Do you know where? Any chance we could sneak in and have a look?”

  “I know exactly where!” Glennis exclaimed. “Come over tomorrow, and we’ll beard the old bully right in his study. With you there he can’t roar at me. We might even find out if he sent those threats. I bet he did.” She pinched Julia’s knee with bruising joy. “This is going to be fun.”

  Julia turned away. She didn’t have the heart to warn her friend that truth and justice might not fall neatly into their laps or that their search might not lead in the direction she expected. Of all they’d seen and heard that afternoon, one thing was lodged in Julia’s thoughts like a thorn.

  It was the one piece of Alice’s story that made no sense. On Naomi’s desk calendar someone had jotted a reminder for last Friday’s meeting with the WPA, the fateful meeting Alice had been forced to attend alone. It was scheduled for eight thirty that evening. Unless Dr. Perry had been wildly mistaken, for some time before Alice had to leave the apartment, Naomi would have already been dead.

  CHAPTER 11

  “I don’t believe you’ve met my sister,” Philip said to the middle-aged couple about to join their table. “Julia, Eddie Kessler and my aunt Arlene.”

  The assistant police commissioner bristled at his nickname. His wife craned to present a cheek for Philip’s and Jack Van Dyne’s kisses. “Why aren’t you shameful creatures dancing?” She reached for Julia’s hand. “With so many young lovelies to choose from. Hello, dear.”

  The third Vancill sister, Julia cautioned herself, not taken in by the woman’s strong grasp and twangy country voice, which brought to mind gingham picnic baskets and peach brown betty. Very unlike Lillian, the oldest sister.

  “Exhaustion,” Philip said. “All that vivacity wrings me out.”

  “Tosh. You’ll never find a girl just sitting here. I know for a fact your mama taught you better manners.”

  “For God’s sake, let them be,” Kessler said. His wife quieted to a dimpling smile.

  They sat at a round table toward the rear of a cavernous ballroom in the St. Regis Hotel. Despite lavish decorations, elaborate refreshments, free-flowing liquor, and a crush of wealthy New Yorkers in benevolent finery, the Children’s Aide benefit gala was boring. That some of the gaiety and munificence would be dimmed when the primary hosts, the Rankin family, were in mourning was to be expected. Harder to bear for Julia were Philip’s and Jack’s resolute disinclinations to dance. Barring the approach of a total stranger, she could only watch the swirling colors, stirred by tall black spoons, on the distant dance floor.

  “I’d offer to stagger through the paces with young Julia here,” Philip said, “if only to staunch her peevish sighs, but I shouldn’t have a clue where to put my hands.” He regarded her through a haze of smoke. “She puts a chap in a frightful corner with that indecent getup.”

  Julia smiled as if he’d paid her a lavish compliment. In a way, he had. He’d been fuming about her appearance, and particularly her gown, from the moment she entered the library to wait for the motorcar to collect them. It was a beautiful thing, her third-best evening frock, a Molyneux of tangerine chiffon. The calf-length hem was cut in points, each glazed in silver beads. A rolled edge of white velvet skimmed across the bodice and over each shoulder, converging behind in a deep V just below her waist. Julia adored backless gowns. Her preferred décolletage bared shoulder and spine, plunging not to bosom but to bum. Philip might grouse like an old fusspot about her choice in clothes, but most men concurred with David, who’d once declared her back, framed in flutes of satin or chiffon or crepe, magnifique.

  “Seems peculiar,” Philip mused, “what passes for ladies’ fashion these days. Wasn’t long ago a chap pined for a peek of the curvy bits, but a good square mile of cloth intervened. Now girls prance about in a few frayed handkerchiefs, and all we get is bone and gristle. Really, Julia, with a puff of beard and a head cold, you could pass for a lad. Can you honestly think that’s to be paraded about?”

  After her morning adventure with Glennis, she’d spent the afternoon at an uptown salon. Massaged, painted, and coiffed, she emerged with every inch rendered ready for display. Her hair was freshly shingled, the last few inches of fluff left behind on the salon floor. She found it delicious, head sleek as a seal’s beneath pomade and a lattice of pearls. And Philip was dead wrong about her figure; these days curvy bits were for parlor dowagers.

  Mrs. Kessler objected on Julia’s behalf, as she was meant to. Her lecture on the male’s responsibility to admire the female was interrupted by an old man with a pink skull and pendulous jowls: Mr. Rousch, Julia was informed, of the toe-tapping Feeney, Churchman, Kessler, and Rousch. One of the arbiters. He assessed Julia openly, giving no hint of whether he saw her as victim or interloper, before inviting Mrs. Kessler to dance.

  Kessler flagged a waiter and ordered a fresh service of Courvoisier. “She’s been full of beans all week. Muriel’s expecting again. Arlene’s off to Cleveland tomorrow, though what help she can be at this point I can’t imagine. Just as well. I’ve been run off my feet with this damnable Dorothy Caine case.” Kessler glanced at Julia. “Pardon, Miss Kydd.”

  Julia waved off the apology. “The papers say the killer has you outfoxed, Mr. Kessler. Is it true?” Apparently Philip’s detecting acumen was not so swift and wizardly after all. He’d waved off her inquiries into the alarming headlines—Killer eludes capture! Police baffled!

  “The usual flummery,” Jack said.

  Kessler drew heavily on his cigarette. “For once not, unfortunately. The victim’s rooms were locked, Miss Kydd, and the doorman swears no one entered until the maid found her body the next day. It’s the queerest thing.”

  “And yet there were—blast!” Philip coughed.

  Willard Wright sank into Arlene Kessler’s vacant chair. For the second time in less than a week, he joined Philip’s table uninvited, though this time he came bearing his own glass, half-full of champagne. He tipped it toward Julia. “Dazzling as ever, Miss Kydd.”

  “We were just speaking of the Dorothy Caine murder,” Jack said.

  Wright’s goatee spiked. “Delicious. Dead Broadway canary. Negligeed demimonde, midnight assignations, underworld johnnies. Grist for your crime-besotted brain, Kydd. Let’s see you solve this puzzler.”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Locked rooms got you cheesed? Not enough bloody fingerprints?”

  “They’re making progress,” Jack said.

  “Half th
e force is on the lookout,” Kessler said. “They’re good men, well trained in sound investigative procedures. We’ll find the devil.”

  “Oh, assuredly,” Philip said. “Despite all that.”

  Wright leaned closer, wordlessly goading for more.

  Philip eyed him with open dislike. “As I’ve said before, fingerprints, bloody or otherwise, have little to do with finding criminals. Modern coppers are so busy measuring boot prints and powdering crime scenes they overlook the only evidence worth considering.”

  Wright looked pleased at having provoked this little lecture. The others might have heard it many times before, but Julia felt obliged. “Which is?”

  Kessler snorted and poured himself more brandy.

  “The psychological,” Philip said. “Subtle aspects of the crime’s nature and execution—its distinctive signature, if you will. Determine that and you need merely find the person who matches it. Everything else is for convincing juries.”

  Kessler looked away with an air of benign endurance. Julia knew a hobbyhorse when she heard one, and this was clearly Philip’s. It begged for a swat on the rump.

  “But surely circumstances are powerful too,” she said. “Any person can be driven to do a terrible thing if the situation is dire enough.”

  “The beloved motive? Right behind clues in a copper’s heart. Just as useless and misleading. I’ll grant you most crimes occur for some purpose, powerful or flimsy. I merely claim that how a crime is committed, its particular style, is what reveals the culprit’s hand. Degas and Renoir could observe the same haystack, but their paintings of it would be discernibly different, regardless of why they wanted to paint the prickly thing. It’s the same with crime.” Philip scrambled to his feet. “Miss Schoenmacher.”

  A young thing in mauve satin, like a dozen beauties before her, swanned past their table in hopes of an invitation to dance. This creature was in luck—or perhaps not. Wright rose, circled her waist, and led her away.